


nothing lights my fire (like you do)

by connabeth



Series: 12 Days of Percabeth [11]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Domestic Bliss, F/M, Lots of kissing, Minor Suggestive Themes, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, estelle/annabeth sisterhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28352766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/connabeth/pseuds/connabeth
Summary: sitting there, surrounded by the giggles of his sister, the soft smiles of his parents, the warmth of Annabeth's body fitted into his side, he knew this was what home felt likeora cozy christmas day spent with his fiancée and sister. literally just an excuse to write copious amounts of percabeth and estelle fluff lol there's no plot :)
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Series: 12 Days of Percabeth [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055423
Comments: 5
Kudos: 119





	nothing lights my fire (like you do)

**Author's Note:**

> no beta we die like men  
> sorry this is low-quality lol i spent too much time on the edit😭

Percy frowned, digging though his drawer, and then his closet, in search of his missing blue hoodie. He wasn’t planning on wearing it, but he didn’t have the greatest track record of making sure everything he washed got back safely in his dresser. He’d lost about six different socks at this point, all from different pairs. He was sure he’d folded this hoodie though, and stuffed it back in his drawer sometime yesterday.

He exited their bedroom, eyebrows pulled together, eyes roaming his surroundings for the hoodie. He came to a stop by the couch and smiled at the sight. His fiancée sat snuggled into the armrest, legs tucked beneath her, hair splayed to the side, his hoodie swallowing her small body.

“Oh, there it is. I was looking for that.”

She glanced up at him, noticing he was staring at her hoodie. “Sorry, do you want it?”

Percy grinned knowingly. “If I said yes, would you actually give it to me?”

“No,” Annabeth smiled, shaking her head.

He laughed and sunk down on the couch beside her. “Get over here, you,” he muttered, dragging her by the waist so she was mostly sitting on his lap. “I’m pretty sure you wear this more than I do.”

“It’s just really comfy,” she shrugged. “And it feels like you. If that makes sense.”

He pressed his soft smile into the smooth skin of her neck. “We all have our things. Mine’s that old picture of you from when you were thirteen, I think. I keep it in my wallet now, I don’t know if you saw. Mom helped me laminate it and everything so it wouldn’t get wrinkled.” He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “And I plan to keep the original til the day I die.”

She shifted over in his lap so she could face him, wrapping her arms around his neck, her hair tickling his face. “I love you.”

He stared back up at her, eyes shining in adoration and content, before leaning up to catch her lips between his. “Love you more.”

“Shut up.”

He laughed again, securing his arms around her waist and tucking his head into her chest, her hands weaving through his unruly locks of hair. He hummed in satisfaction, a calmness settling deep within him. Percy tucked his socked feet against hers. They both wore matching holiday-themed socks and pajama bottoms. They were pretty cute, if he had to say so himself.

“We should go shower, babe. Then we can wear those matching sweaters you got off Amazon. I haven’t even tried mine on yet, I hope it fits.”

Annabeth let out an indecipherable whine into his chest, burying her face deeper into his shirt, and he couldn’t stop the smile that pressed into cheeks. Cuddly Annabeth was undoubtedly in his top five Annabeths.

“I promise you more cuddles if you get up now,” he said, caressing her mussed hair back into place. When she didn’t budge, he groaned, shifting up. “Are you really gonna make me carry you there?” No response. “Ok, here we go,” he grunted, lifting her limp body off the couch, making his way to their bedroom, fiancée thrown over his shoulder, her arms wrapped securely around his neck. She clung to him like a koala and he almost didn’t have the heart to put her down.

He gently set her on the edge of the bed, despite her reluctance. Reaching into his closet, he brought out the pair of ugly Christmas sweaters his fiancée had ordered on a whim while trying to find portable chargers online. She was an impulse buyer, usually getting sidetracked by ads and going down rabbit holes while looking for standard kitchenware or electronics, which led to them having an abundance of unnecessary objects around the house. He had tried to convince her that a third Alexa wasn’t necessary, but she insisted it was completely different than the other two. It absolutely wasn’t, but he thought her fascination with them was cute.

“You want jeans or sweatpants, baby?” he asked, grabbing a change of clothes for both of them.

“Ew, why would I wear jeans?” she said, mildly disgusted at the implication. It was a cold Christmas they were spending entirely indoors.

“Sweatpants it is then.”

“Leggings.”

He shook his head, opening her leggings drawer. “Whatever you say.”

He grabbed a comfortable set of underwear for both of them and set them on the dresser. “Come on, get up,” he said, making grabbing motions with his outstretched hands. “Let’s go.”

She had fallen back onto the bed in the time he’d gathered their clothes, and was now groaning into the pillow.

He smothered a smile. “What am I ever gonna do with you?”

“Kiss me.”

He rolled his eyes, fond. “You’ll get your kisses if you get your ass up and into the shower.”

“No,” she said petulantly. “Carry me.”

He let out an exasperated groan, and stalked over to her side and pinched it slightly, causing her to yelp and smack his hand away. He laughed at her pout and hefted her into his arms again, leading them into the bathroom and setting her down on the counter. He reached into the shower to turn the water on, letting it heat up before they stepped inside. He pulled off his own shirt and then helped Annabeth with hers. Once they were both undressed, he let her into the shower and stepped in after her.

They stood, letting the hot water soak their bodies, the cold touch of winter dissipating in the heat, warmth flooding their senses. She reached behind him to grab her shampoo bottle and poured a generous amount into her palm, slowly massaging it into her curls.

“Here, let me,” he said, taking the bottle from her. She turned around, her back facing him, and he gently worked the shampoo into her hair, the weight of her body leaning back into his chest. He gave into the urge to press a kiss to her shoulder. After he’d scrubbed it all into her head, he turned her back around and kissed her forehead, holding his lips there, letting the steady stream of water beat down on them. He leaned back after a few moments, just to look at her in the way that made her knees go weak every time. She closed her eyes, content, letting the shampoo soak into her curls.

His eyes traced her figure, a body carved by the Architect’s hand, the product of deliberate strokes and methodical contouring. Standing there before him, shampoo suds resting in her wet curls, water sliding over the gentle slopes of her body in rivulets, a content smile settled onto her face, she was art in its purest form. She opened her eyes as though she could feel his adoring faze shower her body in practiced affection.

“What?” she asked, the corner of her lips quirked into a knowing smile.

“You’re divine.”

“Well we both are, a little. Isn’t that the point?”

He poked her stomach teasingly. “Just shut up and take the compliment, will you?”

She let out that laugh, soft and breathy, but still a sound that reverberated deep in throat, that made her shoulders shake, that made him look at her like she was his world. She leaned up, wrapping her around his neck, and tilted her head back to let the water hit her face and run down her body and seep into her hair, rinsing the shampoo out. Slowly, she brought her head back up and opened her eyes to look at him.

“Now condition my hair,” she demanded.

“So demanding,” he teased, grabbing her conditioner anyway and pouring some into his palms.

Eventually, they made it out, pruned fingers and blissed-out smiles. He grabbed them both a towel and lightly smacked her ass before wrapping hers around her body. She retaliated, smacking his ass with his towel, before he tied it around his waist. They got dressed in the comfortable silence of their bedroom. He looked at their reflection in the mirror and grinned. This was definitely one of her better impulse buys. He wore a sweater with an angry woman painted on it, teary-eyed and fingers pointed. Annabeth wore a sweater with a bewildered cat sitting before a salad, pulling together the “woman yelling at a cat” meme. He’d wanted to wear the cat sweater, but he’d lost rock paper scissors, as usual. Also, his biggest character flaw was that he could never say no to her.

They walked into the living room and settled back onto the couch, feeling fresh-faced and snug after their shower. She sat across his lap, and he rested one elbow on the armrest and the other on the back of the couch behind him.

“What do you wanna do today?” he asked, eyes mapping the slopes of her serene resting face. The Jacksons did most of their celebrating on Christmas Eve and the day itself was reserved for some quiet, relaxed time with family. They didn’t have any concrete plans.

Before she could open her mouth to respond, an excited voice cut through the air, ruining the calm atmosphere of the morning, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He bit his cheek and hid a smile as Estelle threw herself into his fiancée’s lap.

“Annie!”

“Hi, Stella,” Annabeth returned adoringly at the young bright-eyed, cheery-faced girl. The older girl tucked a stray curl behind Estelle’s ear and leaned forward to press a soft kiss to her cheek. Estelle beamed in response. She’d always loved being the center of Annabeth’s attention. Not too different from her brother in that respect.

“What, no ‘Hi, Percy’?” he chimed in, mildly offended.

Estelle turned to him, as if just realizing he was there, although she was quite literally on top of him, considering she was nestled into Annabeth’s lap.

“You smell bad,” she said plainly.

He gawked. “I just showered! What do you mean, I smell bad?” Estelle’s idea of fun was bullying him for absolutely everything and he entertained her just because she was too cute for this world.

She shrugged, struggling to hide a smile, curls bouncing. “You just do. Right, Annie?” she asked, turning to the blonde.

Annabeth nodded seriously, playing along. “Yeah, Perce, are you sure you showered?’

“Like you weren’t there,” he muttered, pinching her side as she let out a surprised shriek.

“Stell, he attacked me! What do you say we tickle him ‘til he surrenders?” she suggested to the little girl, smirking deviously.

Estelle seemed thrilled at the suggestion and happily agreed, “Okay!”

Percy let out a groan that slowly turned into laughs as the girls continued their assault on him. He couldn’t escape either, considering they were both on top of him.

“Okay, okay! Stop! You win,” he wheezed, short for breath, conceding.

Annabeth stuck out her hand for a high-five and Estelle happily obliged.

“You two are menaces,” he muttered, pretending to be disgruntled, but really he couldn’t bring himself to care when they looked as sated and adorable as they did. They were his whole world.

“Can we paint our nails?” Estelle asked, interrupting the silence.

“Of course. What colors do you want?” Annabeth asked, pulling the girl further into her lap.

Estelle considered it for a few moments, before deciding, “I want holiday nails. Can you do cool patterns on me?”

“I can try my best,” Annabeth promised, lifting Estelle off her lap and onto the ground. She rose from Percy’s lap and he immediately mourned the warmth. “Come on, Stella. Let’s go get the polish,” she said, extending her hand out for the little girl.

Estelle happily took it and followed Annabeth into their bedroom. They returned a few minutes later, each holding five bottles of nailpolish each.

“Wow. That’s a lot of colors,” Percy said, eyeing them as they set the polishes onto the table.

“I want us to have matching nails!” she said, pulling Percy down to the floor in front of the couch, where she and Annabeth had settled. “I want a Christmas tree on this finger, and a snowflake on this one, and stripes on this one, and Santa on this one, and─”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down, Guppy. Let’s take this one at a time.”

Annabeth instructed Estelle to be slow and steady with her application, watching carefully as the girl did her first finger, before letting her do the rest on her own. Her heart squeezed as she watched the girl’s eyebrows knit in concentration, tongue slightly sticking out─she looked so much like her brother. They worked on their nails in silence, Estelle occasionally asking Percy or Annabeth for help (“Don’t mess it up, Percy!” “Oh, jeez, okay. I’m gonna try my best, Stella.”). When it came to the designs though, Estelle and Percy didn’t know how to proceed. They all had their base coats on, and Annabeth had a Christmas tree painted on her left middle finger.

“Whoa, how the hell do you do that? I wanna try.” He attempted to paint one on his own finger, periodically glancing at hers for reference, his hands a little more unsteady.

Percy paused, sticking his arm at eye level, staring at the back of his hand in distaste. “Wow. Okay. That’s one ugly ass tree. It looks nothing like yours,” he whined.

“It’s pretty in it’s own way.”

He glanced up and stared at her. “Babe, that’s just code for ugly.”

Annabeth let out a sharp laugh as he pouted, and kissed the back of his hand in consolation. “Go get the remover. I’ll do it for you.”

He grinned, kissing her in the forehead in gratitude as he rose from the floor.

He returned, and she took his hand in hers and patiently painted a green tree on, then dotted it with colorful ornaments once it had dried. He looked on in fascination. She started on a snowflake on his neighboring finger before Estelle crawled for help.

“Annie, can you do mine?” she whined, looking onto her work on Percy’s fingers.

“Of course, sweetheart, come here.” The blonde furrowed her eyebrows, trying to get the design right on the girl’s little nails.

Annabeth had gotten her artistic skills from sketching and drawing as an architect for so long─she didn’t regularly draw things other than buildings or fountains or the sort, but she undoubtedly had a knack for it.

About half an hour of painstaking detail and copious amounts of nail polish remover later, the three of them sat with matching holiday nails.

“We look cute,” Percy observed.

“Yeah,” Annabeth sighed. “You’re welcome.”

“Love you, Beth.”

“Thanks, Annie,” Estelle hugged her, and Annabeth held the girl to her chest. Estelle pulled back slightly to look her in the face again. “Now can we do our hair?”

Annabeth laughed. “What do you wanna do to it, Stella?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, looking to the other girl for ideas. “I just want to match.”

Annabeth smiled, endeared. “All of us? You want Percy to do it, too?”

“Mhm,” she nodded, seriously.

She turned to her boyfriend, eyes twinkling, “You heard the girl.”

Percy grinned. “I’ll do yours and you can do hers. Wait, who’s gonna do mine?” he pouted.

“Ew,” Estelle said, wrinkling her little nose. So it wasn’t going to be her, apparently.

“ _ Ew? _ ” Percy repeated, offended. “What does  _ that _ mean? My hair is very beautiful and luscious, thank you very much,” he said, tickling his sister’s side until she let out a series of sharp giggles. Smiling, he retracted his hand. “Hmm...what hairstyle should we do? My technical knowledge is pretty limited.”

Annabeth fondly rolled her eyes at the two of them. “Something fun and cute,” she mused, lips puckered in thought. “Space buns?”

“You’ve already got space buns.”

“What?”

Percy glanced at Estelle to make sure she wasn’t paying attention. “Cause your ass is out of this world,” he said cheekily, dropping his voice to a whisper. She smacked his shoulder lightly and his eyes sparkled in mischief, shit-eating grin in place.

“How long have you been waiting to use that line?”

“So long,” he groaned. “But it called for a hyper-specific scenario.”

Annabeth laughed quietly, shoulders shaking. “I hate you.”

“Hoodie rights revoked.”

Annabeth gasped, reaching out to tase his sides. “You take that back!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! You can have all of em, I don’t care,” he wheezed, twisting around to get away from her hands.

“That’s what I thought. Let’s do pigtails. I feel like you’re going to mess it up otherwise.”

“Rude.” She wasn’t wrong, though.

Annabeth pulled Estelle closer, so the girl was sitting in front of her. She positioned herself in front of Percy’s lap, the three of them forming a small braid train.

Annabeth created two neat braids in Estelle’s dark hair, after brushing the five year old’s unruly curls out. Percy struggled a little with his, having to undo his plot and restart multiple times, but he managed to make them look nice once he was done. Annabeth had tied a mini ponytail at the top of his head in compensation since he couldn’t get his own braids. He looked ridiculous, but he couldn’t stop smiling, especially when his fiancée looked childish, but extremely adorable in those pigtails.

Annabeth groaned, standing up after sitting for so long. Estelle and Percy rose, following her lead.

“You two down for some cookies?”

“Is that even a question?” he said, already making his way to the kitchen and pulling out the blue dye.

“I want Christmas colors, too,” Estelle demanded.

“Oh, boy,” he mumbled. Now, he had to mix in dye in three separate bowls and combine a piece from each to make each cookie. Leave it to his sister to make everything complicated. They spent the next half an hour in the kitchen, Percy doing most of the work, batting his fiancée’s and sister’s hands away every time they reached for a bit of cookie dough. But they were giggling between themselves and he was so wrapped around their fingers, he pretended not to notice them stealing just once.

They wrapped themselves under thick blankets on the couch, afterwards, stomachs and hearts full. Sally and Paul had come down later that evening and the five of them spent hours laughing at each other’s exaggerated tales from work, cuddling with Estelle, playing heated rounds of Monopoly, and talking in front of the crackling warmth of the open fire, the flickering glow of the orange flames dancing across their faces. Sitting there, surrounded by the giggles of his sister, the soft smiles of his parents, the warmth of Annabeth's body fitted into his side, he knew this was what home felt like.

His cheeks hurt from smiling all evening, as he and Annabeth rose to head back into their bedroom for the night. He shucked off his shirt, stretching out his limbs, before tossing himself onto their bed, waiting for her to join him.

“I actually have a little present for you I didn’t give you yesterday.”

“Oh? Beth, you really didn’t have to─”

“Shut up,” she ordered, a smirk playing at her lips, and he closed his mouth immediately. “This one was kind of for both of us.”

She disappeared into the bathroom and returned a few minutes later in a fairly revealing Mrs. Claus-type dress and he choked on his own saliva at the sight of her.

“Holy shit,” he managed, eyes glued to the way the dress fit her body like a glove. The term “goddess” wasn’t enough to do her justice.

“Told you so,” she smiled, reaching to turn off the lights, the dim glow of the string lights illuminating her body in an ethereal glow.

“Shut up and get over here, Princess,” he demanded, his voice bordering on a growl.

“It’s Mrs. Claus to you,” she said, gray eyes sparkling in mischief.

“Oh my god,” he groaned, pulling her enticing scantily-clad body to his and shutting her up with his lips. He pulled his mouth from hers a minute later, lips already starting to become red and swollen. “Wait, does that make me Santa Claus? Should I get into character? Ho, ho─”

“I don’t like this idea anymore,” she decided, swatting his shoulder and he laughed under her.

“I love the outfit, though.  _ Way _ out of Santa’s league.”

“Thought you would. And I’m aware,” she said, loftily, rolling her eyes and pulling him into a searing kiss that sent a delicious heat curling through his body straight down to his toes.

Yeah, it was a good Christmas.

**Author's Note:**

> come follow my tumblr @skaterannabeth for more and lmk what you think :)


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